Your New Favourite Reader

Reading on small mobile devices can at times be a drag, especially when it comes to the web. Unlike tablets which are great for complex magazine layouts or broad-sheet style news presentation, smartphones and their smaller screens have to be carefully catered for. Safari’s Reader view which was added in iOS5 formats the page beautifully but isn’t always available, and still relies on webpages for content.

This is where your news reader app comes in. It should provide perfect page formatting, an intuitive and customizable interface, lots of content and stupidly simple sharing. This is what Pulse does, and it does it well.

The UI is intuitive, with sources added to vertical columns which you can name. Each source appears as a horizontally scrolling timeline and once a story has been read its entry on the timeline is dimmed. There are never more than three sources on-screen at once, which doesn’t overwhelm the reader or make the screen feel too busy.

While reading an article swiping right-to-left displays the next article (vice versa) and there are a variety of sharing options in the bottom right of the screen. Nothing gets in the way of the reading experience and thumb-proof navigation – even URLs open within Pulse, which is far less frustrating than Safari stealing focus (at least on iOS).

Pulse also offers a registration which will appeal to users with multiple devices as it’s a handy way of keeping everything in sync. Registration also allows you to save stories to read later, either using the mobile app or via this handy bookmarklet when browsing the web from your computer. You can even send these saved stories to other services, including Instapaper and Evernote7 Ways To Make Use Of Evernote7 Ways To Make Use Of EvernoteRead More. Syncing works both ways, so if you “star” something when you’re out it will be waiting on your Pulse.me profile next time you sit down at your desk.

Impulsive Behaviour

In addition to the usual news and blogs, Pulse also comfortably chews through other content including stories shared by your Facebook friends, YouTube’s current popular videos (without opening the terrible iPhone YouTube app), Reddit, Flickr, Readability and more.

Adding this content is as simple as hitting the cog icon at the top left, which allows you to add or remove services, re-order sources and rename columns. Hitting the “+” icon at the bottom of each column displays the catalog, which is split by subject matter. With all this good-to-go content it’s really very easy to create a personalised digital edition in very little time at all.

If you’re a fan of Google Reader for your news reading then Pulse allows you to log in, peruse your subscriptions and add them as separate news sources (meaning you can put each one wherever you like, ordered however you like). Comparatively, Google Reader on a smartphone doesn’t provide a bad reading experience, but remains a webpage and just can’t beat the presentation or ease of use that Pulse provides (screenshot below).

If a particular website is not listed then hitting the magnifying glass in the top left allows you to search the web for a feed. One tip from trying to find a few sites – if you’re not having any luck try the bulk of the URL – I was trying to find a blog called “Sad and Useless” which wasn’t giving me much luck. A second search for “sadanduseless” as per the web address yielded the result I was looking for.

Very rarely are news reader apps limited to solely reading the news, and as you’d expect Pulse comes with its own social connectivity. Log in and allow access to Twitter and Facebook for super fast sharing to your followers in just two taps. Similarly, sharing via email has been kept simple and opens within Pulse, rather than launching Mail (iPhone, Android may differ).

I gotta say I LOVE Pulse. It has a LOT of feeds to choose from, but I wish they would have more. But it's amazing how easy is to read a story with Pulse without leaving your tablet and the commodity of your sofa :D

I myself use Pulse in my Android devices. But I am currently looking for a news reader with good offline support. Google Currents is a very good app but only a very few news sites are currently optimized for it. If anyone knows a better alternative, please let me know.

I've recently discovered (thanks to an iPhone that's locked to the wrong network) that opening Pulse in the morning at home caches articles. Images don't necessarily work, but when I open the reader on the train (where I don't have any connectivity) I can still read the body text.

Thought I'd pass this on as it's answered my call for an offline news reader (minus images). Just don't forget to open it in the morning!

No unfortunately not. Whereas feedly has taken their product to both the desktop and mobile market, Pulse remains a mobile app. I personally prefer Pulse for speed, UI and ease of use. Finding things is so easy, the built-in search lets you grab feeds from all over the web and the importing of Google Reader feeds is fantastic as they can be placed wherever you like, rather than in one big block.